


some sense of touch and a melody (your boy is like a memory)

by restlesslikeme



Category: Bandom, Empires, Panic At The Disco
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-29
Updated: 2012-04-29
Packaged: 2017-11-04 13:15:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/394276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/restlesslikeme/pseuds/restlesslikeme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re a series of falling-togethers, and sharing of spaces; subtle and inevitable as cracks in a cement sidewalk. Ryan doesn’t need to explain it to anyone else- not even to Spencer who knows almost every corner of his story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	some sense of touch and a melody (your boy is like a memory)

**Author's Note:**

> The Sound and The Fury belongs to Faulkner.

Ryan finds Tom on the deck, lying on his back with his shirt off and a pair of Ryan's oversized sunglasses over his eyes. He looks kind of absurd, his jeans loose and low on his hips. The sunglasses are too big and too effeminate for the scruff on his jaw, the set of his nose.

Ryan just stands in the doorway watching him for a few minutes before asking, "What are you doing?" 

Tom still doesn't move, but his lips turn up a little bit. It's the only way Ryan is sure he isn't asleep. "Birdwatching."

"Birdwatching." Ryan repeats without inflection. Tom just smiles again.

There's the noises of traffic from far off down below them, some kind of back up somewhere probably, because Ryan can hear horns beeping in that distant, detached sort of way. He likes it, the sound of activity. In a backwards way it makes him more aware of the isolation they have; how separately they can exist from everything else.

Eventually Ryan sits, his back against the railing and his legs straight out just above Tom's head. He opens the book he'd brought out with him onto his lap and picks back up reading silently to himself until Tom reaches up and closes fingers around his ankle momentarily, asking. Ryan understands.

"When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtains it was between seven and eight o' clock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch." Ryan reads, and Tom's fingers loosen from his ankle, just resting there now.

"It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it."

Tom is quiet but listening, and Ryan pauses, allowing his eyes to scan the passage a few times in his head. He can barely hear the traffic anymore, but he's completely aware of Tom's breathing.

"Because no battle is ever won he said." Ryan continues. "They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools."

He reads on for a few pages, and by the time he's finished Tom is tracing circles against his ankle bone with his thumb. Ryan closes the book and Tom shifts to face him, his hand sliding away from Ryan's leg as he leans up on his elbows to press their mouths together. Ryan allows his eyes to close and leaves the book on his lap in favour of putting his hands against Tom's jaw, feeling the soft prickle of his facial hair under his fingertips. 

Tom kisses him slowly, but not softly, the press of his lips and the sweep of his tongue emphatic and firm - there's no room for discussion. His mouth is warm and always a little chapped; his tongue tastes like cigarettes and vaguely like the citrus-mint toothpaste he used this morning. 

Ryan's lips still feel warm when Tom pulls back. He's not sure how long it's been.   
Tom leaves his shirt on the deck when they wander back inside, his pack of cigarettes tucked securely in the waistband of his jeans.

"We should go into town tomorrow," Ryan says. "I want to go to the bookstore."

"Only if I get to drive." Tom’s looking at his camera, big hands cradling it expertly while he adjusts lenses. Ryan goes past him towards the kitchen and opens the fridge. It’s empty but for a half-full bottle of gingerale and a carton of milk that could be sour. There’s a couple of eggs rolling loose around the shelf on the door.

"I want to go to the thrift place as well," Ryan says. He's at the cupboards now, shifting past boxes of offbrand strawberry poptarts with **TOM** written across them in black sharpie. As if Ryan would try to eat anything but the chocolate ones anyway. "And the vintage place."

"And the record shop," he hears Tom say from somewhere behind him. "Yeah babe, let's do that." 

The first time Tom called him that Ryan had been too surprised to react at all except to blink. Afterwards, when it started to become a recurring thing he'd always made a point of scowling. Tom didn't stop though, but he also didn't really acknowledge that he was doing it, so Ryan doesn't frown anymore.

They’re a series of falling-togethers, and sharing of spaces; subtle and inevitable as cracks in a cement sidewalk. Ryan doesn’t need to explain it to anyone else- not even to Spencer who knows almost every corner of his story. It’s something he knows in the way that Tom looks at him. It feels like Tom’s arm draped over his hips at night while they sleep; solid and heavy and existing in the best of ways. Tom keeps a smooth, over-exposed polaroid of Ryan in his wallet.

Ryan barely hears the whirr of the shutter anymore, just keeps moving things in the cupboard until he finds a package of stale crackers at the back. He stands in the kitchen and opens the plastic, eating them slowly one at a time, savoring the way they don’t quite crunch properly anymore while Tom snaps a few more photos of him and then wanders off to find something else to make his subject.

And it’s fine.


End file.
